Nokia signs up to Silverlight
Silverlight at the end of Nokia's tunnel
CELLPHONE market leader Nokia today said in a press release that it had signed up to Microsoft's Silverlight platform for its S60 and S40 mobile devices and Nokia Internet tablets, marking the Vole's first mobile win for its rich media development framework.
Nokia said that adding support for Silverlight would increase opportunities for developers to produce rich, interactive applications that run on multiple platforms in a consistent and reliable way. The Vole's Silverlight is a cross-browser, cross-platform, cross-dressing plug-in which delivers next-generation media experiences and interactive applications. Since its launch, more than 8,000 applications have been developed for it, according to a statement made by John Case, a general manager with the Vole.
Last year Silverlight announced its support for Linux and Macs. With this latest mobile push, Microsoft is moving toward making Silverlight a main competitor to the likes of Adobe flash.
The Volish press release noted the fact that, in the fourth quarter of last year, Nokia's S60 held over 53 per cent of worldwide market share for " converged device software". Case also added that Nokia was only the first of several similar announcements for Silverlight on mobile devices. He reckoned that the next generation of Windows Mobile would support Silverlight, but declined to give a time frame for the release of Windows Mobile 7.
Nokia is well ahead in the smartphone race, so its new partnership with Microsoft will substantially extend the reach of Silverlight by making the platform available for hundreds of millions of devices worldwide.
Microsoft is scheduled to display Silverlight on S60 during the opening keynote at he Vole's Mix '08 conference on March 5. µ
Comments
Adobe blew it...
...when they treated Linux and mobile platforms in general as second if not third class citizens.Corporations such as Nokia are fed up having to pay large licence fees to Adobe for shit ports of Flash for their Linux platforms (ie. Internet Tablets) and Nokia probably don't want to get into the same mess if/when AIR becomes successful. Hence Nokia backing Silverlight, which has solid multi-platform support from the get-go, should put a fire under Adobe and give them cause to reconsider the mistakes they have made in the past.
It's not over for Adobe, Flash and AIR by a long shot but Adobe need to get on board the Linux and mobile platform train that is currently leaving the platform. Open sourcing their Flash Player wouldn't be a bad idea either.